Robert Henri and Cosmopolitan Culture of Fin-De-Siecle France
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 1999 Robert Henri and Cosmopolitan Culture of Fin-de-Siecle France Linda Jones Gibbs Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1847 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zed) Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ROBERT HENRI AND COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE OF FIN-DE-SIECLE FRANCE by LINDA JONES GIBBS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy/ The City University of New York 1999 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9917662 Copyright 1999 by Jozies Gibbs, Linda All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9917662 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © 1999 LINDA JONES GIBBS All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Art History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. [signature] Date Chair of Examining Committee [signature] 1- 26- ° ^ Date Executive Officer William H. Gerdts_________________ Diane Kelder Bettina Knapp_________ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iv Abstract ROBERT HENRI AND COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE OF FIN DE SIECLE FRANCE by LINDA JONES GIBBS Advisor: Professor Gail Levin The American painter Robert Henri (1865-1929 ) lived in Paris and its environs for nearly eight years between 1888- 1900. This dissertation relates the critical impact his extensive exposure to fin-de-siecle French culture had upon his early paintings, his theories about the production of art, and ultimately upon the ideological foundation of the Ashcan School. This is accomplished through analysis of the many significant cosmopolitan elements Henri encountered in France not only in the realm of art but literature, philosophy, and politics. Henri's rebellion against the art institutional bureaucracy and hierarchy and his non-traditional teaching methods have frequently been attributed to the individualist spirit of the American frontier where he spent much of his youth. Such stereotyping diminishes the importance of his residencies in France. In the Introduction, these persistent references to Henri's western upbringing are chronologically surveyed. The nationalist context in which Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V he has so often been placed and his alignment with primarily American writers, artists, and thinkers is also called into question. Part I of the dissertation begins with a chapter on Henri's early studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and surveys the degree to which that training influenced his theories and style. The subsequent three chapters chronicle his first trip to France from 1888-1891 in terms of the literature he read and the many parallels that exist between such diverse sources as Emile Zola and Leo Tolstoy and his own evolving attitudes about art. Part II begins with a chapter on French politics and its influence on Henri, with an emphasis on the anarchist movement. The following chapter charts the similarities between the anti-positivism of Henri's art theories found in his treatise The Art Spirit and the theory of vitalism developed by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. The final chapter surveys early critical reaction to Henri's early paintings and analyzes these works in terms of the many influences discussed throughout the dissertation. The conclusion assesses the impact of Henri's French experience on the philosophical development of the Ashcan School and establishes his importance as a vanguard of complex modern thought in turn-of-the-century American. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vi PROLOGUE Some years ago while working at a museum in Utah I curated an exhibition entitled Harvesting the Light: The Paris Art Mission and Beginnings of Utah Impressionism.1 The exhibition contained works by a small group of Utah artists who joined the hundreds of Americans flocking to France to study in the late nineteenth century. These Mormon artists were from rural communities in what was then the Territory of Utah. They were subsidized in Paris by the Mormon Church which later employed their skills to paint murals in the newly constructed temple in Salt Lake City. Their stay in Europe was relatively brief - one to two years - and while in Paris it appears they sequestered themselves as best they could from what they deemed a sinful environment. They were in Paris solely to obtain the training necessary for their religious oriented obligations back home.2 The limited degree to which these "art missionaries, " as they came to be called, immersed themselves in the environment of France was the antithesis of the broad education experienced by Robert Henri who arrived in Paris in 1888, precisely two weeks after the first artist from Utah reached the French capital.3 Not only did Henri return to France for extended periods of time between 1888 and 1900, he absorbed its cultural and intellectual climate perhaps more than any Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Vll other American artist of his time. In addition to visiting the Salons and other art exhibits and galleries, Henri learned the French language and read current newspapers, periodicals, and contemporary novels. His diaries also recount his awareness of and interest in the political turmoil of fin-de- siecle France. In the early twentieth century, several Utah artists who belong to a generation subsequent to the "art missionaries" came under the tutelage of Robert Henri in New York. Among them was Jack Sears (1875-1969) who studied with Henri from 1907-1908. Sears painted a small vigorous portrait circa 1907 of his then famous teacher working at an easel presumably in the classroom. (Fig. 1) Henri is seen in profile, his features somewhat caricatured in the vein of Sear's cartoon-like illustrative style. Henri's left hand is raised to the canvas on which he is painting a nude model. His right hand holds a cigar along with several brushes loaded with paint. A figure, probably an observing student, is roughed into the background. From his vantage point the student cannot possibly see the canvas on which Henri is working; if he is watching anything at all, he is watching Henri, a reinforcement of the notion that Henri the man, and not his art, had the greatest impact on his students. The brushstrokes of Sear's portrait are loose and sketchy in keeping with Henri's advocacy of a rapid painting style, but what is most telling about Sear's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. viii observation of his teacher at work is the way he has depicted the paint on Henri's palette. It appears to have a life of its own, literally leaping upwards toward the brush and/or canvas. "The mere brush stroke itself must speak," Henri wrote, "it is . rich, full, generous, alive . and knows what is going on.”4 Henri's desire for art to be a living vital force went beyond the realism espoused at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he first studied and differed radically from the traditional attitudes toward art to which he was exposed at the Academie Julian and Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. As early as 1891 he would declare that "the theory of painting and the theory of life . is the same."5 This fervent belief in the marriage of art and life was later directed toward his many students.